50 Sentences for a Lifetime
by vagabunda
Summary: River and Jayne in 50 sentences. Response to challenge on LiveJournal for sentences written in response to keywords.


**Fandom: **Firefly  
**Pairing: **River Tam/Jayne Cobb  
**Rating:** PG-13

The entries in this set can either be read in order as a series of "snapshots" from one cohesive fic or as standalones. Reader's choice.

**#01 – Air**

Since before Miranda, Jayne felt as if River sucked the atmo from every room she stepped into, but he couldn't quite decide whether his mouth went dry from a fear he wasn't willing to admit or because of something else entirely.

**#02 - Apples**

River didn't like the way he'd jerk his eyes from her, Adam's apple bobbing in his throat, but the warmth that spread inexplicably in her chest at the inevitable slide of Jayne's eyes back in her direction almost made up for it.

**#03 - Beginning**

"Keep a sharp eye on River," Mal had said before leaving the ship; Jayne wondered when exactly that oft-used phrase had taken on a particularly unsettling flavor.

**#04 - Bugs**

"I know you think I dig," she said from the catwalk above his head, "that I'm crawling and creeping in your skull for secrets, but that's not true; I don't have to burrow that far to know what you think of me."

**#05 - Coffee**

Zoe brought treasure back from a job and River's eyes were as dark as the brew itself when she handed her share to Jayne saying "Too bitter for my tongue, but welcome on yours."

**#06 - Dark**

"You might want to start treading lightly, Jayne," Mal's voice followed him down the ladder into the darkness of his bunk, "ain't like we're too blind to notice where your attention's been wandering of late."

**#07 - Despair**

"I can tell that something's bothering her again," Simon murmured, his thumb pressed firmly against Kaylee's instep, "and, like always, I'm clearly not the one who can make things better."

#**08 - Doors**

It seemed to River that she could make a door close behind Jayne's back just by walking into a room; it wasn't a superpower she enjoyed.

**#09 - Drink**

His momma had always told him that only the worst sort of _hun dan_ drank himself into a bottle to escape a hard truth, but Jayne figured that his momma would forgive him, just this once.

**#10 - Duty**

"You're not a burden or a duty, River," Simon whispered into her hair where it spread against his shoulder, "and everyone on this ship, from Inara to that oaf of a Jayne, should be able to see that."

**#11 - Earth**

Inara quickened her steps toward the mess upon hearing the crash, brushing past a running, agitated River on the way, but she only found Jayne, mute and vaguely contrite, a broken earthenware bowl at his feet.

**#12 - End**

"This 'aint gonna end well, girl," Jayne predicted when she came to him, sliding up against his side beneath the covers as if she belonged there, as if she had been there since before forever, "there's no way it can."

**#13 - Fall**

Jayne's center of gravity faltered when she first touched him, plummeting deceptively downward in ways he hadn't felt outside of drunkenness or drowsing half-dreams of falling, and he knew immediately that her small fingers had the power to catch him or maybe even push him over the edge altogether.

**#14 - Fire **

"We are just little sparks, you know," she said afterward, sleepily tracing arcane words from forgotten languages into Jayne's shoulder (scratching away guilt with her fingernails); "we are little souls burning to nothingness out here in the black with the rest of the stars."

**#15 - Flexible**

More than a few eyebrows raised when Jayne quietly placed a long polished length of wood in River's hands on her birthday, but they all enjoyed the sight of the girl stretching in the corner of the common area where she'd insisted Mal install the barre so no one chose to question the gift too closely.

**#16 - Flying**

"Ain't worth fretting over none," Jayne grumbled at a visibly worried Inara as _Serenity_ shuddered around them, "the girl may be cracked in the brainpan but I know she ain't about to let us all fall out of the sky, leastways not today."

**#17 - Food**

Money had kept its habit of being tight, but the thought of River's smile across the table prompted Jayne to dig into his own savings to diversify the menu beyond standard protein, if only for a meal or two.

**#18 - Foot**

"Gorram it Mal, it's not like she hurt him none," Jayne grumbled testily, "Hell, I'd have shot at more than his boot had that motherless son of a whore pawed at me they way he done grabbed at the girl."

**#19 - Grave**

"Jayne seem a mite solemn to you lately Sir?" Zoe's voice pierced Mal's concentration so abruptly he nearly dropped the holster he was mending, "he ain't even complained about the dangers of us harboring the Doc and his sister for weeks now."

#**20 - Green**

"Yes, I know it's gangrenous," River's voice seemed far away and brittle, yet its deadly calm provided a beacon for Jayne's struggle toward consciousness, "but I'm not going to let you amputate before you try a more aggressive tissue regeneration treatment, Simon."

**#21 - Head**

"You worry too much about what the others think" River said, the dark curtain of her hair framing her face as she leaned over him, "you really should leave the mind-reading to the experts."'

**#22 - Hollow**

"She'll never be completely sane you know," Simon's tongue probed at his newly split lip meditatively; he tried to keep his voice light in the face of the mercenary's scowl but only managed to sound wistful, "she has empty spaces that no one will ever be able to fill; trust me, I've tried."

**#23 - Honor**

"I know you aim to do the right thing by that girl," Mal muttered to Jayne, fingers itching to pull what he wasn't altogether convinced wasn't a righteous trigger, "you'd have been long gone otherwise so I can't help but think that maybe our little Albatross done tamed some of the stupid out of your sorry carcass."

**#24 - Hope**

"I can only hope," Inara snipped as she threw Mal from her shuttle after withstanding a private tirade of his amused incredulity at the affair, "that this experience has helped you realize that you might not have been blindsided by something as painfully obvious as Jayne and River's mutual affection, alarming as it may seem, had you possessed the emotional sensitivity Buddha gave a gnat."

**#25 - Light**

River liked the look of Jayne's hands against the paleness of her skin by the dim glow of i Serenity /i 's console; by all reckoning Jayne liked it too, since on long, quiet night shifts he always returned for more.

**#26 - Lost**

Jayne's blood ran cold when they returned without her and it froze solid in his veins as they told him, voices strained and tense, how River'd been snatched away by blue-handed men and whisked aboard an unmarked fed-ship before vanishing untraceably into the black.

**#27 - Metal**

River tasted copper on her tongue where she'd bitten it in her focused personal war against the drugs her captors injected to keep her passive; "Copper for a kiss," she thought blearily, running the flavor over her lips, "I can't forget."

**#28 - New**

After a few months of lots of nothing they got a new pilot, a cheerful guy who made Kaylee's laugh ring out through _Serenity_'s corridors - who sometimes even managed to coax Zoe into a rueful smile with his tall tales - but perceptive enough to tread lightly around Jayne and to appreciate that the crew suffered vacancies no one could fill.

**#29 - Old**

It was Inara who finally dug the coordinates out of the Cortex; the message was old, but Mal figured they should investigate seeing as it was the only lead they had at all concerning River's possible whereabouts and seeing how it was likely he'd be cheerfully murdered in his bed by his mercenary and his ship's doctor otherwise.

**#30 - Peace**

River stared at the wall of her cell and watched a familiar ship dock at the opposite side of the complex through eyes that were not her own; it was the first promise of serenity she'd had in months.

**#31 - Poison**

"It looks like they kept her on a pretty interesting cocktail of drugs," Simon stated, his clenched fist belying his professional demeanor, "but I'm more concerned with the possibility of additional subliminal implantation; there may be new triggers we don't know about."

**#32 - Pretty**

River opened her eyes when Jayne touched the blunt ends of her newly shorn hair; he liked it well enough, but she wondered what he'd think if he ever learned that she'd cut it because she'd entertained thoughts of using it as her noose.

**#33 - Rain**

"You can't keep it up girl," the rumble of Jayne's voice in his chest vibrated against her back where he curled around her, "pretendin' all day and wearin' false smiles; dodging raindrops is a losing battle in any 'verse."

**#34 - Regret**

"I'm sorry I'm not whole" she said one day out of nowhere, voice wavering at a higher pitch than Jayne liked, "but maybe it's enough to know that I wish I were."

**#35 – Roses**

The wreath on River's head was heavy with implications and she adjusted it gingerly before stepping through the door toward her future; Jayne's momma had picked the wild roses herself.

**#36 - Secret**

River cleaned carefully beneath her fingernails as the blood spiraled away down the sink in the bunk they shared; there were just some things Jayne didn't need to know.

**#37 – Snakes**

"Jayne, the whole point is to _'look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it,'_"River quoted somewhat testily as she adjusted her skirts and pulled her bonnet strings tight; "deception is key to any caper."

**#38 - Snow**

Jayne protested when he returned to their bunk to find what looked to be a snow bank on the bed with River buried underneath, but he soon learned the many benefits of a down comforter.

**#39 - Solid**

His head was full of the adjectives she'd never be - solid words like 'wonderful' or 'endless' – expressions he bound up like treasures and tried to keep secret in the corners of his mind she rarely touched, but she saw them all nonetheless and hated them for their implication of wholeness.

**#40 – Spring**

"Building a nest," River murmured, her head on Jayne's shoulder as they watched Kaylee and Simon bicker over baby names across the room.

**#41 - Stable**

"I know you think sometimes about us leaving, starting a home in a place of our own," River ran her fingers through Jayne's short hair, noting the newer gray at the temples, "but that isn't going to happen; _Serenity_ is as stable as we can get."

**#42 – Strange**

Jayne sputtered and paced about for a while before settling down next to River, dumbfounded, "You can stop acting so surprised about Mal and Zoe," she said taking his hand; "it was inevitable after Inara left and, after all, stranger things have happened."

#**43 - Summer**

River watched the sun glint off _Serenity_'s hull as it took off and a chill ran through her despite the warmth of the day; she turned back toward the dusty settlement where Jayne's momma waited feeling as if summer had already ended.

**#44 - Taboo**

"You know how tetchy folks 'round here can get about strangers, son, and there's little breeds superstition like birthing," Jayne's Ma looked as if she'd aged a decade in the two weeks since he'd left River in her care; "when the baby came early they held up the doctor in town and there weren't nothing the midwife could do."

#**45 – Ugly**

The sight of River and Jayne working quietly side by side in the common room was a familiar one, but Zoe found their silence right disturbing of late; she knew the pair had gone through some rough patches before, plenty of 'em too, but there was a certain ugliness to the kind of wound that left no visible scars behind.

#**46 - War**

A decade and a half had passed since Miranda yet no organized resistance of any significance had surfaced so, after they nearly lost Mal in a scuffle with the Alliance, Zoe took them deeper into the black than any of them had ever traveled; no one planned on coming back.

**#47 - Water**

"That's the planet," River said, finger pointing to a vid image of a blue world in a way that filled Mal's mouth with the bile of dark memories, "it's our by birthright; time to go home."

**#48 - Welcome**

Folks stopped asking questions and looking at them distrustful-like after a couple of years; the abandonment of Earth was all but myth and stories of Reavers, an evil Alliance, and a bloody war became campfire tales to spook small children and earn the occasional hot meal.

#**49 - Winter**

The seasons were off on Earth, winter lasting far longer than anyone liked, even near the equator; Jayne kept a full beard for warmth and River's nephews tugged on it mercilessly until she'd shoo them away with admonishment of "leave the mean old man alone before he shoots you."

**#50 – Wood**

"You were wrong about us ending badly, Jayne," River said as she smoothed her fingers over the rough grain of his crude coffin, "this is the end every one of us meets and there's no good or bad to it; just ending."


End file.
